44 CHAPTER 2: YOUR IMAGES : GLOBAL SOLUTIONS ■ Tinting Images I like grayscale images. I really do. But sometimes they benefit from a color tint. The tint need not be overwhelming. In fact, sometimes a subtle shade of yellow or red is all it takes to give a grayscale image an added pop so it jumps from a page. Take, for example, the 1761 engraving from a Russian bath shown in Figure 2.16. The image was published in black-and-white in a book I wrote on bathing. It looked fine. However, when I went to place the image on my website, it was lacking. It needed to stand out more. Figure 2.16: The original grayscale image. This is what I did: 1. I opened the Hue/Saturation dialog box (Enhance  Adjust Color  Adjust Hue/Saturation), shown in Figure 2.17. Note: This will not work if you are in Grayscale or Bitmap modeit works only if you are in RGB or Indexed Color mode. If you need to, choose Image  Mode  RGB or Image  Mode  Indexed Color to convert the image. 2. I selected Colorize. The image was converted to the hue of the current fore- ground color—in this case, red. 3. I then slid the Hue and Saturation sliders to select variations of color. 4. When I got the tint I wanted, I clicked OK. The tinted image is shown in Figure 2.17. 4363_ch02_p5.qxd 10/11/04 7:24 PM Page 44 45 ■ CORRECTING COLOR Figure 2.17: To tint, make sure the Colorize option is selected in the Hue/Saturation dialog box (left). The tinted image (right). You can tint an image using the Hue/Saturation dialog box (Enhance  Adjust Color  Adjust Hue/Saturation) from within Quick Fix as well. You can also use the Quick Fix Color group. Start by sliding the Saturation slider completely to the left. Then adjust the Tint slider to introduce a tint. You can then use the Hue slider to introduce new tints. (When you adjust the Saturation, Hue, Temperature, and Tint sliders, Commit and Cancel icons appear next to the word Color. Select Commit when you are satisfied with the image. Select Cancel if you are not. Until you select either the Commit or Cancel icon, the Reset button located above the After version of your image is dimmed and inoperable.) Eliminating or Diminishing Dust, Scratches, and Electronic Noise Most digital images suffer from dust, scratches or other marks, or electronic “noise.” Even high JPEG compression can cause unwanted artifacts, which show up as “blocks” and are especially obvious in areas of continuous tone such as a vast blue sky or skin, and can appear as chunky blocks of pixels. Any of these flaws can detract from the look of a digital image. With smaller prints, or when viewed on a monitor, these artifacts are not as noticeable, but as prints get larger—or if an image is magni- fied over 100 percent—these artifacts can be quite visible. Fortunately, Photoshop Elements offers several tools for getting rid of them. Note: Low-cost, third-party solutions to reducing noise are available. Check out Dfine, a Photoshop plug-in from nik multimedia that offers more options than Photoshop’s new Reduce Noise filter. (A trial version of Dfine is included on the CD.) 4363_ch02_p5.qxd 10/11/04 7:25 PM Page 45 46 CHAPTER 2: YOUR IMAGES : GLOBAL SOLUTIONS ■ Reduce Noise Filter The newest and most useful tool in the Photoshop Elements arsenal is the Reduce Noise filter. The filter can be applied from either Quick Fix or Standard Edit. Look at Figure 2.18 (left) and you’ll see a shot I took in extremely low light. I managed to get the shot without using a flash by boosting my digital camera’s ISO setting to 1600. I got the shot, but increasing the ISO introduced a lot of “noise” or “grain” into the image. Figure 2.18 (right) shows a magnified view and reveals the noise more clearly. Figure 2.18: I shot this in low light without a flash by boosting my digital camera’s ISO to 1600 (left). The magnified view shows the noise clearly (right). To reduce the noise, I used the Reduce Noise filter (Filters  Noise  Reduce Noise). The filter is available in both Standard Edit and Quick Fix. Figure 2.19 shows my settings and the results. Figure 2.19: My Reduce Noise filter settings and the results. How did I come up with my settings? I just used trial and error until I got something that looked less “noisy” but still maintained edge detail as well. 4363_ch02_p5.qxd 10/11/04 7:25 PM Page 46 47 ■ ELIMINATING OR DIMINISHING DUST , SCRATCHES , AND ELECTRONIC NOISE Spot Healing Sometimes flaws are not global but specific. The flaws you see in Figure 2.20, for example, were caused by dust accumulating on the electronic sensor of my Nikon D100. Similar artifacts can be caused by a smudge or speck of dust on the lens. A dirty scanner glass will also produce similar results. Figure 2.20: The flaws on this image were caused by dust on the electronic sensor. The Spot Healing Brush is especially effective in removing these kinds of image flaws. To use this new Photoshop Elements brush, you’ll need to be in Standard Edit. The Spot Healing Brush tool is found in the same spot on the toolbar as the Healing Brush tool (use the keyboard command J and repeatedly press J to cycle between tools). Why use it rather than the Healing Brush tool? The Spot Healing Brush tool is easy to use. You don’t need to establish a sample area by holding the Alt/Option key and clicking, as you need to do with the Healing Brush and Clone Stamp tools. You only need to select a brush, position your cursor, and click over an area you wish to heal. You can also click and hold the mouse and drag to “paint” over a complex shape. After you stop painting and release the mouse, the Spot Healing Brush tool goes to work. Like the Healing Brush tool, it automatically samples the areas outside the selection and blends the results with the area within the selection. In the example shown in Figure 2.20, the Spot Healing Brush worked great. This what I did: 1. I selected the Spot Healing Brush tool from the toolbar. 2. I chose a Hard Round 30 pixels from the options bar. I chose this size because it was about 20 percent larger than the area I wished to remove. Using a brush 10–30 percent larger than the area you wish to remove is a good rule of thumb to follow. (You can play around with a soft or hard-edged brush. In most cases, hard is the way to go, but sometimes a soft brush produces a smoother edge transition.) 3. I set the Type to Proximity Match. (Pattern generates an obvious pattern, which isn’t appropriate if you are trying to seamlessly remove a flaw.) 4363_ch02_p5.qxd 10/11/04 7:25 PM Page 47 48 CHAPTER 2: YOUR IMAGES : GLOBAL SOLUTIONS ■ 4. I placed my cursor over the large flaw in the middle and clicked. I then selected a smaller, Hard Round 20 pixels brush and clicked the smaller flaws sprinkled throughout the image. Done. The result is shown in Figure 2.21. Figure 2.21: Flaw fixed with the Spot Healing Brush. If you try the Spot Healing Brush on large flaws, say over 300 pixels, you’ll quickly see why it is called a “spot” healing brush. The tool seems to get confused, and produces unpredictable and often unsatisfactory results. You’ll also find it works best when the area around the objects you are trying to remove is surrounded by uniform color or texture. Combining Tools and Techniques Sometimes you’ll want to use a combination of tools to fix a particularly challenging job. For this example, I used a combination of the Dust & Scratches filter, a selection tool, and the Clone Stamp tool to fix the 50-year-old photo shown in Figure 2.22. Figure 2.22: This 50-year-old photo is full of scratches and other artifacts of age. 4363_ch02_p5.qxd 10/11/04 7:25 PM Page 48 49 ■ ELIMINATING OR DIMINISHING DUST , SCRATCHES , AND ELECTRONIC NOISE In Standard Edit, here’s what I did: 1. I cropped the edges of the scan by using the Crop command (  “Cropping to the Essential Parts” later in this chapter). 2. I applied Auto Levels to optimize the colors and tone (  “Making Dull Images Shine” earlier in this chapter). 3. At a magnification level of 300 percent, I noticed the sky was filled with dust and scratches and other artifacts of age (see Figure 2.23). As I scrolled around, I saw there were also moiré patterns caused by the scanning process. Glass against glass often causes a swirling pattern, called a moiré, to form. The old transparency was sandwiched between two pieces of glass. I was tempted to use the Dust & Scratches filter to clean up the entire image but I knew this wasn’t a good idea because it would blur the image. Instead I selected the sky by using the Lasso selection tool ( ) and applied the filter only to this selected area. I set the Radius at 4 and the Threshold at 0 (see Figure 2.23). In general, higher Radius values effectively remove more dust and scratches but blur other pixels in the image as well. Depending on the image, you can still remove dust and scratches but diminish the blur caused by higher Radius values by selecting higher Threshold values. Figure 2.23: A magnification of 300 percent reveals the details of the problem (left). Applying the Dust & Scratches filter (right) to the selected background removed many of the artifacts and left the foreground area sharp. 4. Although the filter got rid of most of the smaller artifacts, the larger ones remained. To get rid of these, I selected the Clone Stamp tool ( ) from the toolbox. In the options bar, I selected the following options for the Clone Stamp tool: Brush: Soft Round 100 pixels Mode: Normal Opacity: 100 percent Aligned: selected Use All Layers: selected 4363_ch02_p5.qxd 10/11/04 7:25 PM Page 49 50 CHAPTER 2: YOUR IMAGES : GLOBAL SOLUTIONS ■ I positioned the cursor slightly to the side of a scratch or smudge, in an area of the sky devoid of spots. While holding the Alt/Option key, I clicked and sam- pled. Then I clicked and “stamped” over a flawed area, careful not to drag and smear the pixels and cause an unnatural-looking blur. 5. After deselecting the sky, I turned to the foreground and to the woman on the road (see the left side of Figure 2.24). This area wasn’t as bad as the sky but it still needed some cleaning up. Again, I used the Clone Stamp tool to selectively rid the woman’s arm and face of spots, this time using a smaller brush setting for the smaller areas. This was a particularly difficult image, and, frankly, I had to draw the line at how much time I was going to put into it. I could have continued to use the Clone Stamp tool to make each and every detail perfect. However, I was satisfied with clean- ing up the sky and most of the woman. After all, it is a historical photo and I wanted to keep some of its authenticity. The final image is shown on the right in Figure 2.24. Figure 2.24: I used the Clone Stamp tool to selectively clean up the woman on the road (left). The final image (right), after applying the Dust & Scratches filter and using the Clone Stamp tool for extensive cloning. Converting Color Images to Black-and-White There are several reasons why you might convert a color image to black-and-white: black-and-white images stand out in a world saturated with color images, they are often more economical to print, and, if you save an image in Photoshop Elements’ Grayscale mode, they take up less file space. The image in Figure 2.25 was shot by San Francisco, California, resident Julie Christensen for a local newspaper. The newspaper prints only black-and-white photos, and Julie gave me a color print to scan and convert. 4363_ch02_p5.qxd 10/11/04 7:25 PM Page 50 51 ■ ELIMINATING OR DIMINISHING DUST , SCRATCHES , AND ELECTRONIC NOISE I scanned the print in color and converted it to black-and-white simply by choosing Enhance  Adjust Color  Remove Color (see Figure 2.25). This command converted the colors in the image to gray values, assigning equal red, green, and blue values to each pixel in the RGB image. The lightness value of each pixel did not change and, because the image remained in RGB mode, the file size didn’t change either. Figure 2.25: The original image (left). Quickly convert to black-and-white (right) by choos- ing Enhance  Adjust Color  Remove Color. (Photo by Julie Christensen) If you want to keep your file size down, I suggest you convert an image to black-and-white by simply changing modes from RGB to Grayscale (Image  Mode  Grayscale). If you use this method, you won’t have access to many Photoshop Elements filters and effects, which work only in RGB mode. But because grayscale images are only 8 bits per pixel, versus 24 bits per pixel, your file size will be about 75 percent smaller. Cropping to the Essential Parts Cropping is one of the most important ways to improve your digital image. Not only does cropping strengthen the composition of an image, it also reduces the overall size with no degradation in quality. In Photoshop Elements, using the Crop tool or Crop command is one of the easiest things you can do. This is a good time to emphasize the value of working on a copy of your original digital image. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cropped an image to what I thought was an optimal composition but then later decided I needed more sky or more foreground. I would have been in trouble if I didn’t have the original to go back to. In Figure 2.26 you’ll see how with a little cropping I emphasized the child and her day care provider, and made a more compellling image. 4363_ch02_p5.qxd 10/11/04 7:25 PM Page 51 52 CHAPTER 2: YOUR IMAGES : GLOBAL SOLUTIONS ■ Figure 2.26: Before cropping, the image is unnecessarily large and not as effective. The shaded area outside the bounding box denotes the area that will be cropped. This is what I did: 1. I selected the Crop tool ( ). In Quick Fix—shown here—it’s located to the far left of the window. In Standard Edit, it’s in the toolbox. 2. I clicked and dragged over the part of the image I wanted to keep—in this case, the child and day care provider. When I released the mouse button, the crop marquee appeared as a bounding box with handles at the corners and sides. 3. The area to be cropped appears gray by default, which makes it easier to visual- ize how my image will look after it is cropped. Note: The Crop tool’s default shield color, grayor more precisely, black at 75 percent opacityis fine for most images. However, if you are working with images that contain large dark expanses, the gray shield may not be visible, In such cases, you can choose a lighter color and opacity by using the color selection box and the opacity pop-up slider in the options bar. This option appears only after you select the Crop tool and click and drag on your image. 4. I then adjusted the size of the crop marquee by dragging the corner handle. You can move the marquee to another position by clicking inside the bounding box and dragging. To rotate the marquee, just position the pointer outside the bounding box—the pointer turns into a curved arrow—and drag. You can con- strain the proportions by holding down Shift as you drag a corner handle. If you hold the Ctrl key while dragging the bounding box near the edge of an image, you can avoid the “snap to edge” effect. Now when you drag, the transi- 4363_ch02_p5.qxd 10/11/04 7:25 PM Page 52 53 ■ CONVERTING COLOR IMAGES TO BLACK - AND - WHITE tion will go smoothly. Holding the Alt/Option key while dragging any handle causes the crop window to grow from the middle. If you use the Shift and Alt/Option keys together, you can draw a symmetrical crop window from the center. The center is where you first clicked. 5. After I finished, I clicked the Commit button ( ) in the options bar. I could have double-clicked inside the crop marquee, selected a different tool, or pressed Enter/Return. If I had decided not to crop, I could have clicked the Cancel but- ton ( ) in the options bar or pressed the Esc key. In Standard Edit, I also could have cropped this image by using the Crop com- mand on the Image menu. In that case, I would have had to do the following: 1. Select the part of the image I wanted to keep by using any of the marquee selec- tion tools (  “Selection Tools” in the appendix). Keep in mind that regardless of the shape of your selection, the final cropped shape will always be rectangu- lar, based on the outermost parameter of the selection. 2. Choose Image  Crop from the menu bar. In the Organizer (Windows only), you can also crop in the Auto Fix window. (To open the Auto Fix window, choose Edit  Auto Fix Window from the Organizer menu bar, or right-click on the image and choose Auto Fix Window from the pop-up list.) The Crop tool is located at the top right of the Auto Fix window and is fairly intuitive to use. It even has fixed aspect ratios to choose from with a variety of com- monly used sizes such as 4 × 6 inches and 8 × 10 inches. When you are finished with your crop, simply click the Apply button. At times you’ll want to crop to a specific resolution and size. Figure 2.27 (top) shows a series of thumbnail shots that I created for Newsweek.com. I started with liter- ally hundreds of screen-sized images, all of which required a smaller, thumbnail version to be used as a navigation device. The job was so big that any extra steps added unwanted time to the process. Instead of cropping and then resizing each cropped image, I simply put the required size and resolution values of the thumbnail version into the Width, Height, or Resolution text boxes in the options bar. (Clicking the Clear button in the options bar resets the values to their defaults.) The options bar is shown in Figure 2.27 (bottom). I then followed the preceding steps, used in the day care example. After I finished making my cropping selection, I clicked Commit ( ) and ended up with exactly the size and resolution I needed—in this case, 30 × 30 pixels at 72 dots per inch (dpi). Figure 2.27: The Crop tool can be set to crop to a specific size and resolution (top). (Photos by Peter Turnley, with permission from Newsweek, Inc.) The Crop tool options bar (bottom). 4363_ch02_p5.qxd 10/11/04 7:25 PM Page 53 [...]... Figure 3. 11 Then, while holding down the Shift key, select the white area on the other side of the pupil A plus sign appears next to the pointer While holding down the Shift key again, select the whites in the other eye Enhancing the Color It’s easy to enhance the color of the eyes I use a method similar to the one I just described, but instead of using the Dodge tool on the white areas of the eye,... I turned to the other eye and repeated step 2 (The tool is smart, but not smart enough to do both eyes at once!) Done That’s all I did to get the results for both eyes shown in Figure 3. 2 Figure 3. 2: After using the Red Eye Removal tool and the one-click-per-eye method 63 ■ WORKING THE EYES Figure 3. 1: Before using the Red Eye Removal tool Note the position of the cursor in the middle of the pupil It’s... not the red-eye brush of previous versions of Photoshop Elements (The earlier Red Eye Brush has morphed into another useful Photoshop Elements tool, the Color Replacement tool, which I’ll describe in more detail later in this chapter and in the appendix at the end of the book.) 1 2 3 Here is what I did to get rid of the red eye shown in Figure 3. 1: I selected the Red Eye Removal tool ( ) from the toolbar... unwanted artifacts in flat-colored areas such as the skin.) I then slid the Radius slider until I was visually happy with the amount of sharpening In the case of this image, a value of 4.2 was just about right 5 I then clicked OK Figure 2 .34 shows the resulting image Figure 2 .34 : Image sharpened with the Unsharp Mask filter N o te : On the enclosed CD is a trial version of nik Sharpener Pro, a Photoshop Elements. .. image, the more the pixels, and the more “processing” power it takes to do even the simplest tasks How do you determine file size? CHAPTER 2: YOUR IMAGES: GLOBAL SOLUTIONS ■ 54 Choose Window Info from the menu bar Look at the bottom of the Info window Click the triangle and choose Document Sizes from the pop-up menu The number to the left is the approximate size of the saved, flattened file in the Photoshop. .. outside the parameter of the iris, as you can see in Figure 3. 3 When I released the cursor, the tool went to work and nearly instantly gave me the results you see in Figure 3. 4 Varying the size and position of the selection will affect the outcome, and once again, you may need to experiment to get it right Figure 3. 4: The results of clicking and holding while dragging a selection Although I used the Red... control over the amount of dodging.) 3 Select an appropriate brush size (To alter the image shown on the left in Figure 3. 10, I chose a Soft Round 35 pixels brush, which fit nicely in the space between the eyelids and the pupils.) The brush size that works in your image will depend on the size of your image and the white space itself Figure 3. 10: Before dodging (left) After dodging (right) 4 Start by clicking... bar, make sure that the Anti-aliasing check box is selected I also set the Feather option to 3 pixels Anti-aliasing softens the color transition between edge pixels and background pixels and smoothens the jagged edges of a selection Feathering causes some loss of detail at the edge of the selection, but when you apply the Dodge tool, feathering also creates a smooth transition between the white and adjacent... click on the icon on the left of the “Open” dialog Here you will get a choice of views, including “Details.” This reveals more info about your files, including their size and date modified This is handy for determining JPEG file sizes without leaving Photoshop Elements Resizing One of the secrets of success in digital imaging is matching the size of your digital image to the requirements of your output... the eye, I use the Sponge tool to saturate the colors of the iris (see Figure 3. 12) Figure 3. 12: Use the Sponge tool to saturate the colors 1 2 CHAPTER 3: B E T T E R FA C E S ■ 70 3 4 5 To create this effect, I did the following: I selected the Sponge tool ( ) from the toolbox It shares a place in the toolbar with the Burn and Dodge tools In the options bar, I selected Saturate from the Mode menu, . easy-to-use 436 3_ch 03_ p4.qxd 10/9/04 10: 03 PM Page 62 63 ■ WORKING THE EYES tool devoted to fixing the problem: the Red Eye Removal tool. This is not the red-eye brush of previous versions of Photoshop Elements. . appendix at the end of the book.) Figure 3. 1: Before using the Red Eye Removal tool. Note the position of the cursor in the middle of the pupil. Here is what I did to get rid of the red eye shown. filter got rid of most of the smaller artifacts, the larger ones remained. To get rid of these, I selected the Clone Stamp tool ( ) from the toolbox. In the options bar, I selected the following